Barbara Walters Hospitalized After Inauguration Weekend Fall

By Andrea Billups 01/21/2013 at 09:30 AM EST Barbara Walters Mark VonHolden/DMIPhoto.com/FilmMagic The Inauguration festivities took a tough turn for at least one veteran newswoman.Barbara Walters, 83, fell Saturday night on a step at the residence of the British...

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Flu season fuels debate over paid sick time laws

NEW YORK (AP) — Sniffling, groggy and afraid she had caught the flu, Diana Zavala dragged herself in to work anyway for a day she felt she couldn't afford to miss.A school speech therapist who works as an independent contractor, she doesn't have paid sick days. So the mother of two reported to work and hoped for the best — and was aching, shivering and coughing by the end of the day. She stayed home...

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European shares test two-year highs, yen volatile before BOJ

LONDON (Reuters) - European shares inched towards two-year highs and German Bunds dipped on Monday, as a political attempt to break a budget impasse in the United States and expectations of aggressive Japanese stimulus bolstered the appetite for shares. U.S. House Republican leaders said on Friday they would seek to pass a three-month extension of federal borrowing authority in the coming...

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The Lede Blog: Bulgarian Politician Faces Off With Gunman During Televised Conference

A man climbed onstage and attempted to fire a gas pistol Saturday at the leader of the country’s ethnic Turkish political party while he was giving a speech at his party’s annual conference in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria.The gun misfired, according to a BBC report citing Bulgarian officials, and Ahmed Dogan, the leader of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, was not harmed. Video of the incident...

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Why Google Isn’t Scared of Facebook’s Graph Search

Facebook may have just released a major search product that many are saying “declares war” on Google or may at least put the social network “on a collision course” with the search giant, but Google CEO Larry Page doesn’t sound all that worried about the new competition. Because who said Facebook and Google couldn’t get along someday? In an interview for the new issue of Wired published...

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Jenna von Oy Blogs: The Magic of the Holidays

In front of the Christmas Tree – Courtesy Jenna von Oy Celebrity blogger Jenna von Oy is a new mama!Best known for her roles as Six on Blossom and Stevie on The Parkers, von Oy is also a musician who has released two albums and is set to publish a book, The Betweeners.von Oy, 35, wed Brad Bratcher on Oct. 10, 2010, and resides in Nashville with her husband and five dogs.They welcomed their first...

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More than 140 nations adopt treaty to cut mercury

GENEVA (AP) — A new and legally binding international treaty to reduce harmful emissions of mercury was adopted Saturday by more than 140 nations, capping four years of difficult negotiations but stopping short of some of the tougher measures that proponents had envisioned.The new accord aims to cut mercury pollution from mining, utility plants and a host of products and industrial processes, by setting...

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Wall Street Week Ahead: Earnings, money flows to push stocks higher

NEW YORK (Reuters) - With earnings momentum on the rise, the S&P 500 seems to have few hurdles ahead as it continues to power higher, its all-time high a not-so-distant goal. The U.S. equity benchmark closed the week at a fresh five-year high on strong housing and labor market data and a string of earnings that beat lowered expectations. Sector indexes in transportation...

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IHT Rendezvous: Can Armstrong Be Redeemed? How About Galliano?

LONDON — While Lance Armstrong was (not quite) baring his soul to Oprah Winfrey this week, a very different celebrity, the disgraced London fashion designer John Galliano, was taking a small step on the path to redemption.Two years after he was ousted from Dior in the wake of his arrest for a drunken, anti-Semitic rant in a Paris bar, Mr. Galliano is to make a modest comeback at the New York design...

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Why does Michelle Obama need two Twitter accounts?

Michelle Obama is on Twitter! That was big news on Thursday, the first lady’s birthday. The White House announced that Mrs. Obama had launched a new Twitter account, @FLOTUS, and lots of folks chimed in with messages welcoming her to the world of micro-blogging social media.But hold it – wasn’t she already on Twitter? We’ve been following @MichelleObama since the beginning of the 2012 presidential...

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